UPDATE | CLARIFICATION: In my continued research into this issue, I came across The Plume You See is Sediment not Sewage written last week. Apparently the picture above, and used in the Seattle Times’ March 12th article, is not sewage. Here is an update on that picture, and corroborated by field scientists, water quality samples, historical photos, wind patterns, currents, and tidal movements (according to the Plume article) indicating the discoloration is not raw sewage but sediment. This does not discount the severity of this catastrophe, however.
Beginning in early February, Seattle Washington’s West Point waste water treatment plant experienced catastrophic equipment failure due to being inundated with water from heavy rainfall and a high tide. West Point is one of three large regional treatment plants in King County (King County being 1 of 39 counties in Washington State). Here’s is the region’s extensive waste treatment map and facilities that serves about 1.7 million people within a 424-square-mile service area, which also includes parts of south Snohomish County and northeast Pierce County.
Here’s a zoom-out geographical visual with the above blue-colored region seen here and in the center with ‘Seattle’ bolded. And then a zoom-out state topographic and physical map showing all 39 counties outlined in white in Washington State below. This particular area within King County is called the Puget Sound lowlands (major cities including Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Everett and Bremerton) — the region along the northwestern coast of the USA, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is a complete estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and two minor connections to the open Pacific Ocean.
The equipment failure of the West Point waste treatment plan sent some 15 millions gallons of raw sewage and stormwater cascading down stairwalls, blowing off doors, and flooding rooms 12 feet up, it destroyed motors, electrical panels, lighting, ventilation and heating systems. Hundreds of millions of raw sewage was diverted to Puget Sound as that gate, intended to save the plant from further damage, directed the flow to an emergency bypass. I can’t even imagine coming back to work after this.
It has been no easy feat getting the plant back to full operation. In addition to the actual clean-up of the plant itself (again, I can’t even image) is the re-establishment of the ‘bugs’. Think of the human gut and intestines — the digestion system. The stomach is a sac-like organ with strong muscular walls. In addition to holding the food, it's also a mixer and a grinder. The stomach secretes acid and powerful enzymes that continue the process of breaking down the food. When it leaves the stomach, food is the consistency of a liquid or paste.
Sort of the same thing happens with waste treatment, and is just as amazingly complex:
But even prior to the flood, there were ongoing problems at the West Point plant. The plant has 5 squat concrete towers that are called ‘digesters’ (just like the human stomach analogy). They’ve been erupting and spilling foaming sludge over the sides and onto the grounds of the plant. No one can seem to figure out what is causing this disruption to sewage eating microbes -- the bugs have a bug, so to speak:
While common in digesters and normal to some extent, the foam challenge at West Point is different, both in the persistence and amount of the foam -— so voluminous it is taking up enough space in the digesters to reduce treatment capacity. From bringing in experts, to making modifications to the digesters, and even just trucking three to seven loads of sludge away each day, managers have been working for months to fix or mitigate the problem. So far it has defied solution.
How I understand it is that prior to the flood, the plant already had a stomach flu. Then along came bad weather and knocked it on its ass even more so. And now everyone is scrambling to figure out how to help it get back on its feet.
“It’s kind of uncharted territory for us,” said Eugene Sugita, process-control supervisor at West Point. It’s his job, working with two teams of scientific and biological consultants brought in to help, to revive the bugs. And, not unlike your own gut, a shocked and upset system can take weeks to set right. In the worst case, the bugs will go septic — die and rot.
As of March 23rd, steady progress is being reported by King County’s Natural Resources and Parks Department and who are planning for full restoration of operations by the end of April. More than 100 contractors and King County employees are working on a variety of projects. And God bless ‘em. Nothing but admiration goes out to those workers, especially the process outlined in this blog post:
Crews have completed removing all of the contaminated insulation from the pipes that carry and circulate hot water to the digester system, and continue to install new insulation along the hot water pipe network. The solids handling systems have also been restored so that sludge generated from the primary treatment process can be collected and put into the anaerobic digesters. This nutrient-rich soil amendment is used in gardens, on farms, and in forests.
Be good to yourselves, Unsung Heroes. Stay in the light.